


Something Wild

by dragonofdispair, Rizobact



Series: TFPrime Shattered Glass AU [8]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Typical Violence, Evil Medic, Gen, Hacking (past), Mentions of Abuse (past), Mind Games, Platonic Relationship, Prophecy, Telepathy, Torture, Unstable Character(s), Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 15:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/pseuds/Rizobact
Summary: Ultra Magnus has found a relic of unimaginable power, and proven as dangerous in his own way as the now-defeated Optimus Prime. But while an army of empties relentlessly attacking theVictoryis bad enough, only Soundwave can guess the true danger of the Darksaber, which was once shown to him in a vision…





	Something Wild

**Author's Note:**

> There is a slight mirroring of the events of “Triage” (Season 2, episode 14) in this story. Only without much of the relics nonsense.
> 
> As far as the timeline of this Shattered Glass ‘verse goes, this story takes place after both _She Wolf_ and after the final chapter of _Cassandra_

_For every time that I've been foolish when I'd wish that I'd been wise_  
_The power of regret still gets me right between the eyes. ___  
— Mary Chapin Carpenter,[Something Tame, Something Wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s51KzEeVak)

_If you face the fear that keeps you frozen_  
_Chase the sky into the ocean_  
_That's when something wild calls you home ___  
— Lindsey Stirling (feat. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness),[Something Wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2lVEiwKVFM)  


_. _

_. _

_. _

#  One

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.

.

The  _ Jackhammer _ was not a sleek craft, but it was small, and its pilot was as canny and vicious as any Autobot. Wheeljack was an engineer as well as a fighter, so their intelligence on the ship’s capabilities was not always accurate. Tracking it was risky, but the Decepticons needed to take some risks. 

Soundwave recognized the sword Ultra Magnus had found. The  _ Darksaber. _ A construction of Anti-Energon, forged to give its wielder the power of a god. Not that Soundwave could  _ say _ as much. He’d tried. But the memories he’d gotten from hardlining with the crazy feral Prowl defied sensible description. He had  _ tried _ impressing upon his comrades the danger of that sword, but he couldn’t describe the memories, he couldn’t display them, he couldn’t transfer them. He’d had some success writing what he knew, but not the sort of success that actually could be counted as such.  _ A blade of chaos made manifest, created by rituals most arcane and foul, to defeat the power granted unto a mortal avatar of preservation, _ was hardly the sort of description that impressed upon his fellow Decepticons the danger of the relic Ultra Magnus had found.

Not that they  _ didn’t _ believe Ultra Magnus dangerous. He was. He had been even before he’d picked up the Darksaber. But now… an  _ army _ of relentless empties was not the sort of thing the Decepticons could ignore the dangers of.

That was why  _ Soundwave _ was the one out here, while everyone else kept the monsters at bay, tracking the  _ Jackhammer.  _ With any luck he could follow it back to the Autobots’ current base. They needed to find Ultra Magnus. They needed to stop the relentless horde at its source.

Laserbeak was following closer, tracking the ship through the clouds. The  _ Jackhammer’s _ sensors would pick up Soundwave himself in an instant; his symbiote had a chance of remaining undetected. So far she’d evaded the Autobots’ attention, but Soundwave knew that could change in an instant without warning.

They were over a natural rock canyon when it happened. Soundwave was suddenly hit with a wave of  _ panic/pain/help!  _ from his symbiote as she was struck by a blast from the  _ Jackhammer.  _ He wobbled, righted himself, then sped up, sacrificing all attempts at stealth. If they’d spotted Laserbeak, then they already knew he was nearby. Getting to her was more important than anything else now.

Whatever she’d been hit with, Laserbeak was unable to fly but still conscious. Soundwave could hear her screams in his head as he pushed his engines as hard as they could go, knowing he was too far away to reach her before she hit the ground but hoping he could stop Wheeljack from killing his last symbiote.

The Autobots found her first… and it was so much worse than just Wheeljack!

“I’ve always wanted to see  _ just _ how much data a symbiote exchanges with its master,” Ratchet cooed, looking down at the helpless Laserbeak. “I never did get to… experiment, with that when there were more of the little pests running around.”

“Nuh-uh! I shot the thing down, I get to decide what we do with it!” Wheeljack stomped over to his downed captive and stomped right on Laserbeak’s wing, breaking it clean off. Laserbeak screamed. “I say we blow it up. Put a grenade in it, maybe blow up the carrier too.”

“Oooh, that  _ is _ a good idea,” Ratchet agreed. “No reason we couldn’t do  _ both _ though. Let us both have some fun.”

Laserbeak started screaming over the bond to Soundwave that he needed to stay away, go, run. Break the bond and don’t look back! She loved him!

_ NO!  _ Soundwave refused, holding his course and radioing a call for backup. He  _ would not  _ leave her to Ratchet’s non-existent mercy or Wheeljack’s twisted ideas of fun. Using their bond he did what he could to interpose himself between her and her pain. Phantom agony shot down his wing and he wobbled again, but he didn’t let it stop him. He might not be able to defeat both Autobots alone, but he could keep them busy until help arrived.

“Don’t worry, little bird,” Ratchet said almost gently, “we’re just going to make a  _ little _ cut, right  _ here.” _

Laserbeak screamed again under the insane medic’s laser cutter.  _ RUN! _

Soundwave sent her all the  _ love/comfort/support  _ he could, bracing himself against her pain.

“Hey, hey, don’t do that  _ here,  _ you moron!” Wheeljack must have smacked Ratchet because the laser cutter stopped. “It had to have come from somewhere, and that means we’re going to have company soon!”

“Well go keep it busy,” Ratchet said crankily. “I’ll knock the drone out so it can’t track it. Less fun that way, but the kaboom’ll still be fun.”

_ RUN! _ Laserbeak screamed one last time, before her feed cut out from Soundwave’s processor, leaving only her  _ pain _ suffusing the bond. Pain she was, even now, trying to shield Soundwave from. He was still able to get a vague sense of direction over that remaining connection, but not much else. The most valuable thing it told him was that she was still alive. 

Using the coordinates from her last transmission as a starting point, Soundwave flew on. He angled down as he drew close, breaking through the clouds to see—  _ Her wing!  _ Laserbeak’s broken wing, lying there on the ground. 

The  _ Jackhammer  _ was nowhere in sight.

Wary of an ambush, Soundwave pulled up and transformed, landing beside the shorn, bleeding piece of metal. He flung his scanners and telepathy out as wide as he could, searching for Wheeljack so he could anticipate the direction his attack would come from… 

_ Natural laws have no pity. Friction is a drag, so drink a liter of molten space and you will see… the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. _ He heard a mental giggle, tainted with an ever-present search for the fuel left after a battle…  _ Of course you can’t flap your arms and fly to the moon; eventually you’d run out of air to push against…  _

Oh no! Soundwave pulled his telepathy back immediately. Only one mech had thoughts like those, and he was  _ not  _ going to let Prowl pull him into another illusion. What was the crazy mech doing here? Waiting to lick the energon off the rocks (and from the casualties) after the fighting was over? But how had he known there would even be a fight here? 

Soundwave shook off that train of thought as he crouched down to scoop up Laserbeak’s wing with an extended data cable. Prowl knew things because he was  _ Prowl.  _ He wasn’t ever going to understand how he knew the things he did; better just to assume he knew everything and not worry about anything else. Especially when he had better things to be worrying about, like—

Wheeljack leapt from the rocks above, swords already drawn and coming down in a lethal slice. Soundwave let out a binary shriek as those sharp blades scored the side of one arm and severed his datacle close to his frame, his distraction not leaving him enough time to do more than get his head out of the way.

Soundwave managed to bring his other arm-shield up to block the next strike, wincing as the sword bit deep into the metal. With a snarl-smirk, Wheeljack bodychecked them across the ground and slammed Soundwave right into a tree. Soundwave blocked a punch at his faceplate and struck the Autobot with his second datacle in the side, throwing him off him.

Gracefully, Wheeljack flipped to his feet and grinned. “Hey gorgeous. Let’s dance!”

Somewhat less gracefully, Soundwave pulled himself up into a fighting stance, readying for Wheeljack’s next rush. It was usually fairly easy for him to handle Wheeljack, since the warrior was generally very straightforward in his fighting style, but he was used to the edge his telepathy gave him in combat. With that ability locked down to avoid picking up any more stray thoughts from the feral lurking behind the rocks, his reaction times would be slowed — and he was already injured.

And Wheeljack was  _ very _ fast. He rushed forward, throwing his whole weight into a double-slice from his swords. Soundwave parried, glancing the blows off his arm-shields while falling back a pace from the impact. He took note of where the edge of the cliff was behind him; if he fell, Wheeljack would have the perfect opportunity to jump on top of him and really tear into him.

The  _ kick _ slid in, under Soundwave’s guard.

Leg buckling, Soundwave twisted sideways to put Wheeljack’s back to the cliff. The maneuver put him down on one knee, and he dared not lower either of his arms to draw his blaster while he was still so close to those two swords. He needed to get some space between them! But Wheeljack wasn’t letting up now that his enemy was down. Soundwave fended off more sword-strikes, each one leaving wounds in the shield armor.

But he was also easily frustrated. With a growl, he took a step back — just one! — to prepare to body-check Soundwave again. Taking advantage of their positions, Soundwave rushed first rather than pulling away, knocking into Wheeljack to accelerate his backward momentum in an attempt to throw him over the cliff.

“Frag!” Wheeljack didn’t make it that easy. Discarding a sword, he latched right onto Soundwave, pulling himself up and  _ over _ the Decepticon. “Hehe…” he laughed as he landed. “Sticky grenade!”

Instead of taking cover, like a  _ sensible _ fighter, Wheeljack rushed Soundwave again, this time with only one sword. That finally gave him a chance to pull his blaster as he fended off the next series of swings, using his unsevered data able to reach back for where he could feel the sticky grenade attached to his plating.

The Wrecker laughed, high and loud. He was  _ enjoying _ this! Soundwave found the grenade, grabbing it in the graspers on the end of his datacle and pulled it as he fended off a strike to his head. He pushed against the sword with his arm-shield, using his height and weight to force Wheeljack back long enough to…

Another grenade clattered to the ground at Soundwave’s feet.

Cursing mentally, Soundwave finished ripping the sticky grenade free and flung it and himself away from the new explosive in opposite directions. That was the sort of thing he’d normally have been able to see coming with his telepathy, but this time he didn’t even know how many grenades Wheeljack had on him.

Both devices detonated before Soundwave was fully clear of the blast zone, but they caught Wheeljack in their radius as well. Paint and plating bubbled and burned from the heat while the crazed maniac laughed somewhere in the smoke and Soundwave kept moving away from him, this time angling toward the cliff with the intention of going over. He could jump clear and fly away, leaving Wheeljack stranded on the ground.

Let Prowl eat him, and the severed cable and wing still lying on the ground, if he wanted. Soundwave was going after Ratchet to rescue his symbiote.

Launching himself (painfully) into the air, Soundwave strafed the smoking ledge with blaster fire to discourage Wheeljack. Then he angled away, following the weak pulses of  _ pain _ through his bond with Laserbeak.

.

.

.

Ratchet hummed as he worked. Wheeljack’s idea of fun was simplistic — even if blowing up that pesky symbiote carrier did sound amusing — but he had  _ more important _ things on his mind. Like: just how effectively could pesky Soundwave block a virus (or fifty) when they were being uploaded via direct link with its precious drone?

He held the datapad as he watched the loading bar slowly creep towards completion. Wheeljack  _ better _ keep Soundwave occupied long enough!

Weight impacted against his back, knocking him forward and yanking the cables from the datapad out of their jacks in the symbiote. A high, animalistic shriek nearly deafened the medic as claws ripped away armor along his spinal struts.

“What the frag?!” Ratchet dropped the datapad and rolled, trying to crush whatever had landed on him. That wasn’t Soundwave! He didn’t know  _ what  _ it was, other than it was interrupting his operation. That just would not do!

With a deranged laugh, whatever-it-was skittered away before Ratchet could crush it. Ratchet whirled to draw his blaster on the annoyance. Briefly he saw a grey mech with large sensor panels on its back, caught a brief glimpse of a dull red chevron, before it skittered out of sight and into the scrubby tree cover.

“There’s a rumbly in my tumbly, said Pooh,” came a singsong voice, accompanied by another laugh. “I could really go for some honey.”

Ratchet levelled his weapon at the alien foliage, optics narrowed suspiciously. It had been a little smaller than him, made of metal, and it could talk, but what he’d seen didn’t match the description of anything in his files. “Come on out,” he said with a soothing singsong of his own. “I promise I won’t hurt you…”  _ Much! _

It didn’t answer. Ratchet listened for any movement in the alien foliage, but he heard nothing. He started inching closer, his finger flexing on the trigger of his blaster in anticipation. If he could just hit it, he’d have  _ two  _ new patients today! And he didn’t even know what this one was. Maybe he’d need to do a dissection… 

“Aha!” he exclaimed, jumping through the short undergrowth to fire at every grey shape he saw. His excitement faded when none of them fell over screaming in agony. “Slag! Where’d you go?”

The thing didn’t answer. The forest was utterly quiet and still in the aftermath of Ratchet’s blaster fire, smoke lazily curling through the air from the scorch marks.

“It’s alright,” Ratchet said softly, stepping around smoldering patches of grass. “I just want to get a  _ good  _ look at you.” He fired his blaster several more times, his shots still failing to find their target. Blast! How had it managed to disappear like that? It was big enough it shouldn’t have been able to move silently, but he couldn’t see it anywhere.

At last, with a disappointed sigh, Ratchet gave up and walked back out of the trees. He still needed to finish with his  _ other  _ patient before Wheeljack bungled things and Soundwave managed to find him and sneak off with—

“Graahhh!!” Ratchet glared at the clawmarks on the ground where the drone had been. The damn thing had stolen it! Angrily he snatched up the discarded datapad, scanning the surroundings futilely. There was nothing there.

With a huff, Ratchet stomped his way back onto the  _ Jackhammer _ and took off. There was no reason to stay if there was nothing to play with.

.

.

.

Prowl snickered from the top of the tree as he watched the frustrated prey fly away. It  _ galled _ him to let such easy energon escape, but he had more important things than fuel to consider. The  _ story _ pressed insistently against his mind. It was time to play his role, and to entice another to play his. 

And then there would be fuel aplenty. Energon was the  _ easiest _ thing to sacrifice; every mech who’d ever asked Prowl anything eventually resorted to that easy way of getting his answers.

Softly he crooned to the little bird, a tiny fractal so intertwined with her parent their threads were almost one and the same. What one saw, the other saw like she was another pair of his optics… except now those tiny optics were blank, unseeing. There was nothing for her master to see. The little cluster of integers in her breast beat strong as ever, but the tiny mind was dark. Not gone. The fate-thread still burned bright with possibilities, not with the dull misery of handicap. He licked the spilled fuel from sharp little wings, tasting the cruelty of her captors’ plans in the wounds they had left. He didn’t care about the fate he had averted, but the one he now wove… with their plans for her licked away, she tasted like… 

…a gift.

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.

.

The  _ Jackhammer  _ taking off both confused and worried Soundwave as he watched it rise from the rocks without his symbiote aboard. He could still feel Laserbeak’s distress echoing along the canyon, calling to him, and when he dropped to the ground to avoid being spotted he decided to stay there. Flying had aggravated his injuries and he was forced to pause long enough to apply temporary field patches over the worst of them. 

No longer leaving a trail of energon behind him, Soundwave set off on foot.

He wished he dared scan ahead telepathically, but it was too risky. Even if a large part of what had allowed Prowl to trick him before was not knowing what was coming, he couldn’t be sure he could avoid it again. Not when the mech had been able to mimic Ravage so well; he could probably do the same with Laserbeak, imitating her to lure Soundwave away into a trap while the real Laserbeak was left to die. Just like before, he would  _ want  _ to believe he was hearing her, want to believe that she was conscious and that he was about to find her… 

No. He would not risk it. Prowl could cloak his mind behind the mantle of a false Laserbeak, but he couldn’t replicate their bond. There was no way anyone could fake the pull Soundwave felt in his ember. He would rely on that, and his optics, to find her. She wasn’t far away. Soundwave plodded along the canyon floor, listening for things behind and above as he drew closer and closer. Then, after turning a corner around a large boulder, there she was! A dark little collection of wings and metal on the rock. He gave out a cry of relief and moved forward, reaching up with his remaining data cable to take her down—

—only for a snarl to halt him. Prowl seemed to materialize from the rock, the greys of his plating suddenly differentiating from the browns and shadows of the canyons in a manner that was characteristically eerie. Not, he forced himself to think, supernatural. Just a very good understanding of camouflage. He clung to the rock above Laserbeak, looming over her, and Soundwave hesitated. He couldn’t reach his symbiote, not before Prowl did.

“Mine,” Prowl snarled. “She’s mine right now.”

Soundwave shivered. There was only one thing Prowl could want with his injured symbiote, the one thing that was always on Prowl’s mind: energon. 

Tentatively, Soundwave finally risked telepathy. Prowl was right in front of him, he knew whose mind he was looking at so the risk of being drawn into another illusion was probably minimal…

Prowl read — to Soundwave’s relief — distinctly as himself. Further, he had no telepathic countermeasures running, though the tactical computer was quick to suggest some. Overridden, to his additional relief. Prowl wasn’t hiding his thoughts. 

Soundwave carefully delved deeper. Rather than thoughts of energon, corrupted code and metaphors dominated the Praxan’s conscious mind. Images of insects, of threads, of stars all swirled together into an unreadable morass of metaphors… something about an exchange? Whatever that exchange was, the tactical computer had nothing to do with it. All it calculated was how much energon was still in the tiny captive, and that the trade would mean losing that…

Trade. Prowl was willing to trade… “Exchange: agreed,” Soundwave played back, recorded clips still easier than speaking for himself was after so long being silent. He didn’t care what Prowl wanted, he’d give anything, everything he had to keep Laserbeak alive.

“A question and a sacrifice, Soundwave. I didn’t spent so much time teaching you the rules for you to forget them. The little bird is worth it though. Play with me just one more time…” he trailed off into giggles. “Just one more rule you haven’t learned. Learn the lesson, for her.” Prowl gave him a piercing look, optics dimmed. “Speak. Use your own voice for this. It must be you, or it has no meaning… butterflies know only songs and poetry and whatever else they hear, but even a butterfly can find its voice if the need is dire enough…”

Soundwave didn’t understand Prowl’s ramblings, as usual, but it was clear enough the feral Praxan wanted him to stop using soundclips. Because he’d used his voice during the escape? When he’d thought he was speaking to Ravage? Hurt at what Prowl had done welled up inside Soundwave, but his ember seized in fear that he would lose patience and leave, taking Laserbeak with him… 

But the feral only cocked his head and waited. 

“Soundwave…” His voice was quiet and crackled with static from disuse. It buzzed and popped as he started again. “Soundwave… agrees.” Then, before he could lose his nerve, he pulled the patch he’d placed over a primary energon line on his arm aside and slit the tube. Energon welled up from the wound in thick drops, Prowl’s optics riveted to the fuel. “Yours,” he rasped, desperate for Prowl to accept.

Prowl was very quick. He scrambled down from the canyon wall — away from Laserbeak — to Soundwave’s side almost before he could process the movement. Hungrily he licked away the energon that had begun to drip through the workings of Soundwave’s arm until he was licking the energon from the wound itself. He held Soundwave’s arm, digging his claws into the gaps between his armor, latching on and holding as though to prevent him from pulling away as he sealed his mouth over the wound and drew out a long drought of fuel.

It wasn’t a lot, not yet, but Soundwave already felt dizzy. He lowered himself to the ground, careful not to pull away from the ravenous feral. Prowl followed the movement, crawling atop him with careless grace. To hold him down? If so, it wasn’t necessary. Soundwave wasn’t going to struggle. It was worth it, to willingly let Prowl feed from him. For Laserbeak, it was worth it.

Gently, oh so gently, Soundwave found himself stroking Prowl’s plating with his unoccupied hand. The habit he’d developed during the time he’d looked after Prowl on the  _ Victory  _ was still soothing, even now, and Soundwave felt some of his anger at Prowl for what was happening, what had happened, slipping away. It wasn’t his fault. This separation of his thoughts into separate threads, the corrupt code, the strange disconnects from reality, even the metaphors… Had they manifested upon his first awakening in his frame, the incompatibility of the tactical computer’s harsh logic and an insane ember would have killed him. Something had happened to him, something none of them understood, to shatter him and make him into this…

Prowl responded to the touch with an engine-purr of pure pleasure, the sound sputtering again with an unhealthy burr. Soundwave itched to do something about it, to fix it again, but he couldn’t with only one hand, with his fuel slowly being pulled from his lines into the feral’s previously empty tank.

_ I have something for you. _ The thought was sudden, surprisingly clear and uncluttered as it dripped through the lethargy of fuel-drain.  _ Data connection. It will be easier for us both right now. _

Soundwave wasn’t sure he wanted to connect to Prowl’s mind. He’d done so before, in an effort to understand the corrupt code that suffused his thoughts, but the strange, incommunicable vision was all he’d gotten for his efforts. Now… he couldn’t imagine why…

_ A sacrifice  _ **_and_ ** _ a question Soundwave. That’s the rule. You offered too much. I must give something in return. _

It was the clarity of the thoughts that finally moved him. They floated whole and untouched in a sea of emotionless data and unreadable code. They dripped with the need for him, Soundwave, to know how important this was. What did he have to lose, anyway? He would do it.

Slowly, carefully, Soundwave snicked his data cable into the opened interface port behind Prowl’s head… and waited. The mech had no firewalls, but Soundwave didn’t advance. He’d been invited, but he waited to be shown what he was suppose to see…

…A sword, buried nearly to the hilt in rock. He knew its weight, its heft, its color and pattern and everything about it, and that he would never be able to pull it from the stone no matter how he tried…

_ Listen. _ Prowl’s thoughts buzzed around him.  _ Don’t listen to ME… listen. “Whoso pulleth this sword from this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of England…” Beautiful and deadly, one half of the equation — you already know the other. One echo feeding into another, and usually, the echoes are born of the wills of gods, but this story has been twisted as the other has not, and a similarity of words is only convergent evolution. Butterflies before butterflies. All butterflies know are songs and poetry and anything else they hear… _

Data poured through him and Soundwave gasped, arching beneath Prowl’s weight as the vision ended, too weak for a true overload as the mad thoughts retreated. Warnings that his fuel levels were critically low flashed across his HUD as Prowl squirmed to release his data cable, which fell limply to the ground rather than retracting. 

Soundwave’s vision dimmed. Determined to reaffirm that his life was worth Laserbeak’s, worth Prowl’s, he stroked one last time over the offered doorwing…

His vision went dark.

.

.

.

#  Two

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.

.

Waking up was so unexpected that Soundwave lay there on the berth, staring up at the bright lights of the  _ Victory’s _ medbay for a very long time, unable to process what he was seeing… or even that he was seeing anything at all. It wasn’t until Knockout looked down at him, interposing himself between those lights and Soundwave that he realized that he  _ wasn’t dead _ .

His vocalizer spit static before long-held habits made him shut it off and search for a proper recording. His own tags didn’t make sense so it took longer than it should have, and the one he found was the somewhat inappropriate one of Knockout himself demanding,“What the slag is going on here?”

Still the doctor looked relieved. He started to answer, but another interrupted. Megatron. “You nearly died. The feral nearly killed both you and Laserbeak.”

He still couldn’t properly reach his database, so he resorted to simply echoing his Lord’s voice. “Laserbeak.” He didn’t yet have the control needed to alter the recording, to make it into a question.

Knockout understood though. “She’s here. She’s been tortured, and lost a lot of energon, but she’ll recover. Here,” Soundwave followed the doctor with his gaze, and sure enough, there his symbiote was, resting peacefully. He caressed her telepathically and found only painless, sleepy dreams. She was still missing one wing, but she was sedated so thoroughly that she couldn’t even feel it. Knockout’s thoughts informed him that the medic wouldn’t even consider waking her until he’d fabricated and attached a new wing. Anything else would be too cruel to contemplate.

“You were shielding her from… the feral,” Megatron’s voice held a snarl of rage, and Soundwave could see the scene as Megatron had seen it: getting the distress signal, but being unable to answer it right away because of the undead seekers attacking the  _ Victory. _ Felling the last one and rocketing away to rescue his oldest friend only to find Soundwave curled around Laserbeak, Prowl looming over them both, licking energon from the still-sluggishly bleeding wound. The images came with Megatron’s feelings, the visual colored with danger and dread and his leader’s terror of losing his friend and third in command as he chased off Prowl before any further damage could be done…

But Megatron  _ couldn’t _ have arrived before Prowl  _ could have _ killed him. He’d been dying already when he shut down, and Laserbeak had still been on the ledge of the cliff, not in his arms. Prowl must have retrieved her. Prowl must have stopped drinking before Soundwave bled out and retrieved Laserbeak, then licked away the drops from the closing wound so they wouldn’t go to waste… but not resumed taking more. He’d left Soundwave alive. Deliberately. There could be no other way for that scene to be as Megatron had seen it… 

Soundwave wanted to protest. He searched his recordings. None of them had the words for what had happened. “Negative,” he said in Shockwave’s voice. Static clicked as he reactivated his own vocalizer. If he didn’t have recordings, he’d find the words in his own voice. He had to! Prowl  _ hadn’t injured him. _ Prowl had  _ rescued Laserbeak! _ “Prowl,” the  _ vision _ the feral had left him with assaulted his mind and his words disappeared in another spat of static. It was important! 

Megatron simply put his hand on Soundwave’s shoulder. “It’s alright, my friend. Just rest. Recover.” He turned away, his thoughts turning murderous. Twice now… twice that feral had nearly killed Soundwave. He was not going to  _ let _ Prowl attempt a third… 

Soundwave shivered. All he could think was: that wasn’t what had happened.

But he didn’t have the words.

.

.

.

Soundwave wrote a report, of course, though he was unsure if  _ these _ words, the ones he’d finally found, could sway his leader’s conviction. He… had to acknowledge that Prowl was dangerous. That had  _ never _ been in doubt. He was unpredictable, and if he wasn’t one of their Autobot enemies, he was still willing to view Decepticons as fuel-sources, as prey. When he was violent, he was fast, effective and brutal. Even when he wasn’t, he was smart, manipulative, and without morals as the Decepticons understood them. Soundwave… From everything he’d seen in Prowl’s mind and how it operated, Soundwave could not even label him  _ evil _ as the Autobots were. That required a choice and, between the frame-hunger and the compulsions, Prowl had too few choices for Soundwave to apply either the words good or evil to him. There was no safety net when dealing with him. No social pressure, no morals… just the careful navigation of a shattered mind with shattered motives.

Fuel-hunger wasn’t all there was to the mech. It might be his most consistent desire, but if that had been  _ all  _ there was, he wouldn’t have bothered escaping from the cell, wouldn’t have left Soundwave alive… those were things that could only have been done with  _ intent. _ No mere animal motives would have spurred such things. It was something Soundwave had  _ known _ since the second puzzle, when Prowl had turned from the fuel-filled toy Soundwave had just given him to purr against Soundwave’s leg: this mech was no animal, and every complex action taken after had only confirmed it.

No… it was the  _ exchange _ , the compulsion to trade sacrifice for information that truly ruled the mech’s mind. It was a strange motive, rooted in the inscrutable corrupt code that dominated his thoughts. Fuel hunger was the survival instincts of a starving mech, there, always there, ready to consume anything that could prolong his own existence, but the compulsion was his motive. The tactical computer was sharp as Prowl’s claws, but it had no motive of its own; it was the means by which Prowl brought his two motives — survival and exchange — into fruition.

But Prowl was dangerous, he couldn’t refute that, so his arguments seemed unconvincing even to his own optics. They would not make an impact in Lord Megatron’s conviction.

He wasn’t sure he  _ wanted _ to make an impact in Lord Megatron’s conviction. Prowl had  _ used _ him to escape, befriended him then hurt him with one of the most devastating mental attacks Soundwave had ever encountered. Even being hacked wasn’t as bad as that: a simple illusion without even the force of a psychic ability of Prowl’s own to enforce it, created by Soundwave’s own dependence on his telepathy and enforced by his own delusions. It had left Soundwave flailing and uncertain, unable to trust his own senses… and now this. Soundwave was being used again, but he couldn’t fathom the shape of what Prowl wanted this time.

It didn’t help that he didn’t even have the  _ words in writing _ for the… what? vision? prophecy?… data exchange. He could still see the sword in perfect detail, but describing it was futile. The colors, as Prowl’s thoughts had conveyed them, didn’t even exist in any language Soundwave knew. It was  _ as big as it needed to be, as sharp as the Other’s will. _ It was  _ one half of a story told over and over, until myth became legend and legend became the will of gods. _ He could still  _ feel _ the sword, its weight and balance, the  _ power _ that would course through him and could be channeled with all the  _ inherent application of force in the mathematics of fate _ … but attempts to write that into his report left him frustrated and angry. There were no  _ words _ . The prophecy itself was almost worse. He could hear those words clearly, but his efforts to transcribe them produced only broken glyphs, as though the corrupt code of Prowl’s thoughts infused the words and resisted any attempt to convey them separate from it. And of course, as the words had been given to Soundwave mind to mind, a direct data exchange, he had no recording of Prowl’s voice to play back to another. 

Only  _ All butterflies know are songs and poetry and anything else they hear… _ had been a repeat of anything else he’d said before, while in captivity, and thus transcribable, and he was no longer certain that phrase was meant by Prowl to refer to himself. He’d used it to describe Soundwave. 

It was like the first vision Prowl had given him, he decided, though that conclusion did not help his frustration. The Darksaber. Even seeing the weapon in Ultra Magnus’ hand had not allowed him to say weapon’s name properly. Ultra Magnus still had the Darksaber, and now Prowl had given him its equal, its opposite, the Starsaber… The Darksaber, the Starsaber… One half of a story told over and over, until myth became legend and legend became the will of the gods… He shook himself free of such musings. There was an answer there, Prowl had given it to him.  _ You gave too much, I  _ **_must_ ** _ give something in return _ … it was an answer Prowl considered worth Soundwave’s life, because that was what he had offered to the feral, but what it  _ meant _ —

Ultimately the vision proved too frustrating and he deleted the whole exchange from his report.

Without it, his assertions that Prowl’s motives were more complex than even his telepathy could read were even less convincing, but he submitted it anyway. It wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t sway Megatron, but it was all he could do.

Why had Prowl spared him?

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.

Maybe not  _ all _ he could do, he thought later, contemplating his ration of energon in the mess hall of the  _ Victory. _ Knockout had filled his lines and tanks, but normal functioning had still burned him down to his allotted ration. Which he now held, contemplating it.

Earth had energon in abundance. More from a single mine than the Decepticons had seen in centuries. He still  _ remembered _ functioning on half, quarter, eighth rations for  _ vorns _ at a time. This ration was needed to bring his tanks back up to full after a day of going about his duties, but he could easily function without it. Very easily.

Silently he subspaced it, having still not made a decision, still not even certain of what he was thinking, but knowing that he could drink it later in the privacy of his own quarters, if he decided to.

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He had three cubes in his subspace the shift he decided to actually do something with them. Knockout knew he hadn’t been eating all his rations, but thought the experience of being drained had him hoarding it again, as almost all the Decepticons had done when first coming to Earth. Laserbeak was still in the medbay, under Knockout’s care, but she had finally woken, peeping love and assurances and cheeping out her terrors to him. Ratchet and Wheeljack… she had tried shielding him from the pain of losing her, even as he’d tried to shield her from the pain of their torture. And Knockout’s report on her progress… she had be lucky he (Soundwave, Knockout meant — the doctor believed Megatron’s version of the events, when Soundwave knew it had been Prowl that had retrieved her from the Autobots) had rescued her when he had. Her tiny body couldn’t have lost much more energon and remained functional. Which to Soundwave was as telling as how clean her plating had been. Clean and even minimally patched. Prowl had licked away whatever had spilled from her, but had not fed on her before offering to trade her to Soundwave.

He let himself wonder — hope really, in the act of wondering — for a moment what Prowl would have done if Soundwave had not met his conditions for the trade, then shuddered. He knew. Laserbeak held no value to the feral by herself. She had been leverage on Soundwave, or food, nothing else.

He finished his shift with a fourth cube in his subspace then silently stalked to his quarters. He needed to know. Why had Prowl spared him and his symbiote? Why did he keep giving him these useless visions? The energon, the repairs, should be enough to trade some sort of answer from the feral. During Prowl’s captivity on the  _ Victory _ Soundwave had puzzled out just what combination of traits would make an offering a “sacrifice” and thus compel Prowl to answer. It had to belong to Soundwave, it had to cost him something to give it up…

…and Prowl had to accept it. But Soundwave had fuel, fuel he was taking from his own rations to give to the feral, and Prowl couldn’t afford to turn down an offering of fuel.

If this worked, maybe he could offer to repair that unhealthy burr in Prowl’s engine for additional answers… 

He tried paying no attention to Cliffjumper, leaning against the wall beside his door, but the displaced Autobot spoke before Soundwave could pass him by. “You know, I  _ earned _ the name Cliffjumper. Wouldn’t be who I am if I couldn’t tell when someone else was about to do something reckless and stupid.”

Soundwave stopped, regarded the red Autobot. Cliffjumper met his faceplate fearlessly and Soundwave could feel how much courage that took. But the mech had courage in spades. He was concerned, but not judging. He knew sometimes something had to be done, even if it was reckless. Even if it killed you. He just wanted to know that  _ Soundwave knew _ how reckless he was being. 

“Affirmative,” Soundwave answered, again in Shockwave’s voice, affirming both the Autobot’s assessment of himself and answering his implied question to Soundwave. He struggled with constructing the next sentence, and finally resorted to cutting it together from different voices. “Lord Megatron,” Starscream crooned, “ain’t gonna,” Grimlock growled, “approves of this,” Knockout drawled. “Please?” Thundercracker.

“Alright,” Cliffjumper pushed himself from the wall and Soundwave had only a second to feel relieved that the Autobot had understood and wasn’t going to tell Megatron what he was doing. Then he continued, “It’s been awhile since I’ve disobeyed the top brass in the pursuit of a really bad idea… Better hurry and get what you came here to retrieve. I’ve already programmed the  _ Victory _ not to register the next ground bridge we initiate, but we still need to leave quickly.”  _ For someone who’s got control of the whole ship, he’s not thinking through what needs to be done to sneak out real well… _

Did he mean—? From the stubborn set of his mouth and the bright determination in his mind, yes, he meant exactly that. And if Soundwave  _ did _ try leaving without him, he  _ would _ tell Megatron. “Soundwave: does not want — Cliffjumper: hurt, in trouble,” he tried.

“Pfft!” Cliffumper dismissed the concern. “Been feeling restless among you ‘Cons lately. Fighting Zombies is all well and good, but, getting lectured by Megatron for doing something really dumb’s probably just what I need to feel at home again.” Mentally he dismissed the idea of getting hurt. It wasn’t that he didn’t acknowledge he could get hurt, but he was a frontline warrior with everything that implied. Medbay was his second home.  _ Besides, I haven’t finished carving my name on my medical bed yet…  _ Soundwave shook away the frontliner’s thought.

Clearly the Autobot would not be dissuaded. Silently Soundwave brushed past him and entered his quarters to retrieve his tool kit. Cliffjumper’s exasperated confusion followed him: he didn’t know whether to take that as an agreement or not. Toolkit in hand he looked back at the Autobot. “We need to leave quickly,” he parroted, and with a gesture that was probably overly dramatic, he opened the ground bridge. “Coming?”

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#  Three

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There was no sign of Prowl at the canyon where Soundwave had found him and Laserbeak. He didn’t know why he thought there would be: that had been several days ago, and there was nothing here of interest to the feral any longer. Forgoing a second groundbridge, and in deference to Cliffjumper’s lack of an aerial alt mode, they hiked back to where he and Wheeljack had fought, looking for some sign there.

Cliffjumper whistled when he saw the scorched earth, rock and trees where the two grenades had gone off, but Soundwave was more interested in what wasn’t there.

Wheeljack had clearly gotten up and driven off under his own power, but Soundwave doubted  _ he _ had been the one to take Soundwave’s severed datacle, Laserbeak’s broken wing… The energon stains on the rocks were smeared and faint, like someone had come and wiped them up before they’d dried and evaporated. Wiped… or licked.

So which way would he have gone from here?

“Prowl, came here after — Wheeljack — left.” Soundwave started looking more carefully around the perimeter of their makeshift battlefield, hoping to find some sort of trace. “Where did you go?”

Cliffjumper was NOT HAPPY to find out that it was  _ Prowl _ they were looking for, but he resigned himself to it. He’d known this was a bad idea when he’d volunteered for this after all… “There’s a town that way,” he pointed. “He’s a car, even if he’s a decrepit one; if he’s got the energy to scan a new alt, he might be hiding in a scrap yard or something.”

Soundwave accessed his world-map navigational data and saw his companion was correct: there  _ was _ a town there. A small one, called Jasper. “Possibility: good.” He wouldn’t have thought of it on his own, but hiding amongst the humans was actually a very good idea. It would put distance between Prowl and  _ both  _ factions of Cybertronians potentially looking for him, since the Autobots ignored them unless they got underfoot (sometimes literally), and the Decepticons didn’t work closely with their tentative allies.

It wasn’t too far away. Cliffjumper could make the drive and scout around town while Soundwave kept watch overhead, keeping a low profile until they found Prowl. If he was even there.

Circling the town proved too conspicuous, so Soundwave settled on an outcropping overlooking the town, waiting for some signal — either that he’d found something or needed help — from Cliffjumper.

“Oh my god!” came the voice near his foot. “I  _ knew it!” _ Before Soundwave could do more than look in the human’s direction, it—she had pulled out her miniature communications device and snapped several pictures of him. “This is SO COOL! Drunken frat boys setting off fireworks  _ my ass!” _ Another picture, accompanied by a flash of light.

Soundwave sat still, regarding the small human cautiously. She didn’t seem to have any fear of him — her mind was an excited buzz of images and words in two different human languages — and she was talking nearly as fast as her thoughts came to her. “Where did you come from? You were out in the canyon, weren’t you? Did you blow up any zombies? Aw, I wish I had gotten a picture!”

Megatron’s orders (and their agreement with Fowler) was to leave the native populace alone, to avoid them as much as possible to keep them from harm’s way. In this case, however, it was already too late. He’d been seen and approached before he’d even realized he wasn’t alone on the rocks, and now he was being peppered with questions so fast the human had asked two more before he could think how to answer one!

“So are there still zombies around? Is that why you’re here? Can I come with you? I wanna see a robot zombie up close!” Her pink streaked pigtails swayed back and forth as she bounded closer and held out her hand, taking a picture of Soundwave with her pink painted nails in the frame. “For perspective!”

Seeing robot zombies up close was something Soundwave could live without ever having to do again. He hoped there  _ weren’t  _ any out here. It would complicate things if there were; he didn’t want anything to happen to the town because of them. There definitely hadn’t been any in the canyon though, so he felt confident answering that question at least: “Canyon: no zombies.”

“Woah. You talk, like,  _ really _ weird.” Everything bounced as the human hopped closer. “That’s AWESOME!”

Awesome? She thought his way of talking was awesome? Soundwave suppressed a silent chuckle at the thought of Knockout’s reaction to that assessment. “Soundwave: talks perfectly normal.”

“Cool!” She bounced again, this time in place. “So do, like, ALL the robots talk like you? What about the zombies? Do they talk? Do you like death metal?”

“Soundwave: normal for Soundwave. Zombies, don’t talk.” They screamed and howled and made all manner of terrifying sounds, but they didn’t talk. “Death metal?” he repeated, the tonal filter as he replayed her voice giving the words an odd quality.

“Like this!” She pressed several buttons on her device and electronically distorted notes blasted out loud enough they could probably be heard in the town below. The beat was insanely fast, and several different instruments competed for attention, screaming out in a way that should have sounded discordant, but somehow wasn’t. The vocals, when they started, were only slightly better. The words rang out clear over the music, but at least doubled the total volume of the song… it  _ was _ a song, right?

The human seemed to think so. She danced around, jumping up and down, waving her hand over her abdomen — air guitar, apparently — singing along, “On a cold winter morning, in the time before the light…”

Soundwave listened, imagining Laserbeak dancing in the air, doing tricks and beeping along with the melody. He’d made clipshows to music long ago, home video compilations of all his symbiotes relaxing, playing, having fun. There was energy and life in the song, in the way the human was enjoying it, and Soundwave found himself nodding along with the beat himself. 

“You do like it!” the human shouted. “That’s awesome! We should totally be friends! I’m Miko. Nakadai Miko, actually, but who cares about that. What’s your name, no, let me guess. You said you were Soundwave right? That’s a cool name. I want a cool name like that!”

“Miko: good human name.” By itself it could be a diminutive of the name Miguel, “chief” in Chicksaw, or any of “beautiful child”, “shrine maiden”, or “annoying” in Japanese. Based on the format she had given her name in, Soundwave assumed one of the latter. A truly unique name in this region. “Soundwave: likes.”

“No way!”

Soundwave nodded seriously, unsure where she could be finding fault in it. “Good name,” he repeated for a lack of anything else to say.

“You are the best robot friend ever!” And while Soundwave was still shocked by that declaration, she rushed forward and latched onto his leg. 

Of course that’s when Cliffjumper decided to check in, hauling himself up onto the outcropping to join them. “So I didn’t see anything broken down enough to be him, unless you think he chose to scan something without tiressss— what is that! Why is there a human attached to your leg?” Cliffjumper’s weapons spun up as his (still temperamental) combat protocols took in Soundwave’s (Decepticon-THREAT!) proximity to a human (PROTECT!) and decided to take action.

Fortunately Cliffjumper had more control over his processor than to do anything beyond transforming the weapon out of his arm before he stopped himself.  _ No! Stoppit Cliff. NICE Soundwave. Might be creepy as slag still, but can’t shoot him for that… — _ He slammed the weapon back into his arm, with an apologetic look.

“Wow! Another one!” Without letting go of Soundwave, Miko whipped out her device again and snapped several pictures of Cliffjumper. “Is he your enemy? Is there going to be a robot throwdown?!? Awesome!”

_ “No,”  _ Soundwave said firmly, continuing to “speak” in English for Miko’s benefit rather than the Cybertronian Cliffjumper was using. “Friend.” Even if Cliffjumper had pulled a gun on him to protect the human when Soundwave was the one in need of defense. She’d thrown herself on  _ him!  _ He looked at Cliffjumper and nodded acceptance of his apology though. The mech really did have good self control and managed his reflexes well; Soundwave wasn’t concerned. 

“Yeah,” Cliffjumper switched to english easily enough. Of course the language translation packets Soundwave had put together and given all the Decepticons had been based on Cliffjumper’s knowledge, so he didn’t have any issues. “Just surprised me, s’all. My name’s Cliffjumper. What’s yours, pretty lady?”

“Miko. Soundwave’s my friend! Are you here looking for zombies too?” She snapped another picture. “Why don’t you talk awesome like he does?”

Cliffjumper gave Soundwave a quizzical look. “Is that what he told you? That we’re here looking for zombies?”  _ I don’t believe it…  _

As if Soundwave had gotten a chance to tell her  _ anything!  _ “Miko, looking for zombies. Found Soundwave.”

“I saw the explosions — EVERYONE saw the explosions!” Miko swung from Soundwave’s leg armor, back and forth, energetically, but didn’t let go. “The news said it was just some drunk college kids setting off fireworks in the canyon, but it was robot zombies! I know it! I even saw one! Just a glimpse, but I got a picture!”

That got both their attention. Soundwave saw Cliffjumper’s armor flatten against his frame, and he risked reaching out farther with his telepathy to be sure there weren’t any empties lurking just out of sight. “You really saw a robot zombie, huh?” Cliff asked, stepping closer. “Where was it?”

Soundwave pointed to the device she’d been taking so many photos with. “Miko, share picture?” 

“Yeah sure.” She pulled herself up to sit on a jutting piece of Soundwave’s ankle armor and started flipping through her pictures. It took her a while; apparently she’d taken a lot of pictures on the device.

Finally she pulled up the picture she’d taken of the “zombie”. It was furry and out of focus, but it was definitely a grey mech, crawling on the ground. Blurry as it was, it  _ could _ have been an empty that lacked legs to shamble on — Ultra Magnus wasn’t picky about the corpses he raised — but it also lacked the sick, purple glow of anti-energon that empties practically dripped from the wounds and corrosion on their frames.

Miko, however, was certain it was a zombie. In her memory it moaned and groaned and dripped mysterious fluids on the ground as it skittered out of sight. “See? Totally saw one!”

There was something about the agility of those movements in her memory… Soundwave looked at Cliffjumper and saw him leaning over to scrutinize the picture. “Was it near here?” he asked, and Soundwave could hear him thinking the same thing he was. What if it hadn’t been an empty? What if this was Prowl?

“Yeah!” Miko bounced to her feet, now standing on the ledge on Soundwave’s leg armor and clinging to him for balance. “I found the place where the ' _fireworks_ ’,” she made a gesture of holding her hands up near her head and twitching two fingers on each, “went off and it was playing with this long, weird looking, tentacle thing. Totally hentai! But when I whipped out my camera to take a pic, it ran off! I ran after it. I found an awesome battle site. The trees were all shot up with lasers! Pew!Pew!Pew! That’s where I lost the zombie. I’ve been looking for it though!” She hugged Soundwave’s leg again. “That’s how I found you! You’re way cooler than a zombie.”

This time Miko’s memory was less tainted by what she  _ thought _ she was seeing. She was still certain it was a robot zombie, of course, but the barest, blurred glimpses she saw as she chased it through the forest were too indistinct for her add the confusing details. It was just fast and agile, mostly running with awkward grace on all fours, but occasionally scrambling to leap from rock to tree to rock to pick up speed, as it stayed just out of sight. Instead of false details, the memory was filled with Miko’s excitement about finding a real robot zombie and disappointment it wasn’t staying still enough to take another picture, then more excitement at finding the shot-up trees.

Cliffjumper, not having the benefit of seeing her thoughts, was just confused why an empty would have run from her rather than trying to kill her. Soundwave, on the other hand, was now convinced. Nothing moved quite like Prowl. “Soundwave, Cliffjumper: need to find that zombie.”

“You ARE here to find zombies! I KNEW IT!” Miko took a flying leap from her perch on Soundwave’s armor, air guitar-ing on her way down, and landed with another bounce. “I’ll show you! Come on!” She took off running, back toward the canyon.

“Seriously?” Cliffjumper looked at Soundwave like he’d slipped a cog. “I thought you wanted to find Prowl.”

“Zombie,  _ is  _ Prowl.” He didn’t bother explaining how he was sure. It didn’t matter that Cliffjumper wasn’t convinced, as long as he continued to help. Soundwave stood to follow Miko. “We’re going.”

“You’re the boss, sir,” Cliffjumper shrugged.  _ And this is your reckless, horrible idea… _ Miko was already scrambling down the outcropping to get to the ground. Cliffjumper caught up with her after only a few bounds and beat her to the ground, where he transformed and opened his door in invitation.

“Cool!” Miko yelled. “Soundwave! Can you do that?”

In answer, Soundwave simply stepped off the edge of the outcropping, transforming on the way down to hover just above the ground, silently.

**_“AWESOME!”_ ** Miko’s shout echoed off distant rocks. She ran fearlessly up to where Soundwave hovered. Starscream might have been able to hover mere inches off the ground, but the closest Soundwave could get and stay steady was above her head. She jumped up, brushed her fingers against his ventral armor, and got caught in the draft of his jet intake, pulling her several yards towards his wings. “Woah. That was fun. Can I ride in you?”

That… probably wasn’t a good idea. Human bodies didn’t cope well with the sorts of forces flying could exert on them, especially the way Soundwave flew. On top of that, his new Earth alt mode wasn’t a passenger vehicle like Cliffjumper’s. It had no safe compartment for her to ride in.

Bracing for her disappointment, Soundwave answered, “No seatbelt.”

“Who needs seatbelts?” She jumped again; Soundwave felt her fingers trying to find purchase on his armor. “It’ll be totally fine!”

Soundwave responded by rising another foot off the ground, taking himself out of her reach.

“Awwww! Soundwave!”

“Ride with Cliffjumper,” he told her. She’d be safer that way. “Wear seatbelt.”

“Meanie!” she called him, and flounced over Cliffjumper. “Let’s roll!” she got in and pulled his door closed.

Cliffjumper shrugged on his tires. 

The red car’s tires squealed as he took off, following Miko’s directions. Soundwave followed him, enjoying the relative quiet. Miko was interesting, and he actually kind of liked her — no one else said things like she did about him with such enthusiasm — but she talked  _ a lot.  _ He wasn’t used to participating so much in conversation, and it was a relief to get a break.

He hoped Miko wouldn’t stay mad about him not letting her ride with him, and that Cliffjumper wouldn’t be angry about having to field her nonstop questions on the journey.

She led them back to the canyon, past where Soundwave had fought Wheeljack. Cliffjumper circled the battle site, probably getting directions from Miko on where to go next. Soundwave followed them to an area with more vegetation. Soundwave circled as Cliffjumper slowed and dropped to meet them when he pulled to a stop.

They were giggling when Soundwave landed. “Your horns!” Miko exclaimed as she tumbled out of Cliffjumper’s interior. He transformed, laughing, but quieted when Soundwave landed. 

“Sir.”

“Soundwave! Did you know Cliffjumper’s—” the red mech’s finger covered her mouth. “Mmmf!”  _ A spy! _ her thoughts finished.

“Yes, he knows that,” Cliffjumper said. “And the real term is  _ scout. _ Not  _ spy.” _

“Difference: important.” A scout did, well, scouting missions. They went out into enemy territory to bring back information, yes, but they generally didn’t go into enemy bases, and they didn’t do undercover work. Cliffjumper made an excellent scout, but he’d make a poor spy. “Does his job well.”

“So, ah,” Cliffjumper shifted uncomfortably. “Where was the ‘zombie’?”

“This way,” Miko took off running.

Soundwave made an ‘after you’ gesture, though at their size they only needed a few steps to reach the area Miko was talking about. Several trees and shrubs sported blaster marks in a circle all around them. There were large, heavy footprints in the ground where there was enough dirt to hold them, and a short distance away the rocks bore the signs of the  _ Jackhammer  _ putting down and taking off again.

“This doesn’t look like the work of any terrorcons,” Cliffjumper said, moving to the center of the circle. He mimed aiming a blaster at the trees, following the footprints on the ground to work out the sequence of destruction. “Whoever did this was using a blaster.”

“Ratchet,” Soundwave said with a shudder, walking over to another rock with dried traces of energon. Laserbeak’s energon. This was where Ratchet had brought her to torture her. 

“This is where I lost it.” Miko bounced over to one of the scorched trees. “Isn’t this cool?”

“Not to us,” Cliffjumper said. “Someone could have died here. Soundwave? You alright?”

Soundwave stroked the rock gently, remembering how frightened she’d been. How frightened  _ he’d  _ been. Then he gathered himself and nodded to Cliffjumper. Laserbeak was safe and comfortable back in the medbay, a bright spot of warmth in his ember. They were both alright.

“Laserbeak was here,” he said, looking around at the trees. She’d been unconscious, so those shots couldn’t have been fired at her, and there had only been one other mech in the area with Soundwave and Wheeljack keeping each other busy. “Prowl: stole her from Ratchet.”

“Right off the altar of misery,” Prowl’s sing-song voice called out from the tree cover. Miko screeched as she jumped, whipping out her device to look for the source of the new voice. Cliffjumper’s reaction was more drastic: weapons appeared and combat protocols spun up,  _ targeting _ the treeline. “It still tastes like the little one’s suffering.”

“Hold your fire.” Starscream’s command echoed from Soundwave’s speakers as he tentatively reached out with his mind. He kept his own weapons (and the sacrifices he’d brought) put away for now, unsure which he’d get a chance to use. He found Prowl hiding close to Cliffjumper, his thoughts hidden by psychic countermeasures.

“No more free answers,” came the cackle in response to his probe.

“Don’t try anything,” Cliffjumper warned, his targeting adjusting with the additional sound to lock in on Prowl’s position. “You try to claw me again and I will shoot you.” His unmasked thoughts showed that he meant every word, orders be damned. Soundwave didn’t hold that against him. If Prowl struck first, Cliffjumper was more than entitled to self defense.

“Sticks and stones,” Prowl chanted from an entirely new direction, without so much as a whisper of leaves to show he’d moved, “may break my bones, but words hurt Soundwave most.” He giggled.

“Woah…” Miko wasn’t afraid in the least. She wanted to  _ see _ and get a  _ picture _ of the weird mysterious voice. “So weird!”

“So  _ dangerous,” _ Cliffjumper warned her. “He’s caused a lot of damage, the crazy lunatic.”

“Stop,” Soundwave ordered. The barb about words hurting had stung, but it was hardly crippling. Besides, it was words he’d come for. “Soundwave: not here to fight.”

“I know,” Prowl answered from yet a different direction; Miko whirled and snapped a picture at the trees, no glimpse of Prowl. “Knowledge is the vice of all who seek power or victory…” he giggled. “You came with both questions and sacrifices today.”

“Woah. Soundwave!” Miko looked up at him. “Is that an  _ oracle? _ Did you come to get mystical answers from the gods? That’s  _ better than zombies!” _

“Oracle?” Soundwave had come to get answers from Prowl, not the gods they’d only recently learned existed. Though the mech’s answers certainly fell under the heading of mystical. 

“Yeah!” Miko poked her device, bringing up a web page on it. “See?”

**TV Tropes,** Soundwave read.  **Mad Oracle.** Rather than continue reading on the tiny screen, Soundwave searched for the page himself and brought it up on his HUD. He pinged a copy over to Cliffjumper after reading only a few words. The article really was remarkably apt. Cliffjumper thought so too, apparently, and gave Miko an impressed look.

“Soundwave: did bring sacrifices,” he admitted, pulling the energon and his tools from his subspace. “And questions.”

“Yessss,” Prowl hissed, fading out of the tree cover, shivering almost orgasmically. Miko immediately snapped a picture. Prowl’s grey plating had patches of differentiation, places where it was darker or lighter than scarred, plain metal. His chevron was still dull and his optics were off. Claws flexed, deeply scoring the ground. “Tell me.”

Soundwave stepped forward.

“Hey, maybe you shouldn’t get so close,” Cliffjumper said, his thoughts screaming that he thought approaching Prowl was a Bad Idea even as he tempered his words to avoid sounding like he was giving a superior officer an order.

“Proximity: necessary for repairs,” Soundwave said, ignoring the warning as he always had when it had come from Knockout. Getting hurt was a possibility he’d accepted back when they’d stepped through the groundbridge. “Prowl, willing to  _ accept  _ repairs, energon, for answers?”

“You have to say it, Soundwave,” Prowl cooed as he crept closer. “Questions first, or how will I know if the sacrifice covers the cost.” He rubbed against Soundwave’s leg, purring as he had when Soundwave had first offered him energon, leaving hairline scratches in the telepath’s paint with his chevron. He stretched his door up to offer it for scratching.

Miko snapped another picture.

Soundwave scratched the raised doorwing, feeling where the bumpy patches of recolonizing nanites had grown and smoothed out where Prowl’s color was recovering. Despite everything that had happened, it felt good to see Prowl doing well. “Cliffjumper — Miko, do not interfere,” Soundwave said, unsure how well either would follow the order. He started to compose the clips he would need to ask his questions, then paused. Prowl had insisted on his real voice before… 

“Tell me…” The soft words startled Cliffjumper. Soundwave realized belatedly that he hadn’t known about his recovery, slow and stilted as it was. Miko, who didn’t know how truly strange it was for him to speak this way, just made a soft  _ ooooh!  _ of interest. “Why spare Laserbeak? Why… spare Soundwave?” And perhaps, most importantly of all, “Why give Soundwave visions?”

“Oh, Soundwave,” Prowl purred. “ _Why_ is too big. Too much. The sacrifice demanded by that answer is one you haven’t offered. The whole universe works by a rhythm and a reason, even if we ourselves do not know it. It is only your own ignorance which appears to you as insanity… in short: ask a different question, or offer a different sacrifice.”

Choose what to sacrifice or the answers would choose for him… Prowl had said that once, but Soundwave hadn’t given the warning as much thought as it deserved. He had what he was willing to sacrifice today; he couldn’t afford more, no matter how much he wanted the answers. “The visions—” he couldn’t understand them, couldn’t communicate them, “—supposed to do  _ what  _ with them?”

“You,” Prowl answered, offering his other door to Soundwave’s claws, “are a very difficult petitioner. What do you  _ want _ to do with them?”

What he wanted? “…help.” That was the most frustrating thing about not being able to communicate them. “Soundwave wants to help Decepticons. Help Lord Megatron.” 

“Well you don’t need  _ me _ for that,” Prowl said scornfully. “I already gave you what you need.”

“Gave too much.” Soundwave could feel Cliffjumper’s worry increasing as Prowl grew more agitated, but his own frustration wouldn’t let him give up. “Soundwave, doesn’t know where to start.”

Prowl made an interested sound, fuel-hunger creeping into his encrypted thoughts.

“Decepticons need… need the other half of the equation,” Soundwave forced out, his own voice producing metaphors rather than static when he tried to translate the  _ knowledge  _ of the Starsaber burning in his processor. “Weight, balance and power designed to create and counter avatars.” The words sounded like gibberish to their audience, but Prowl knew what he meant. “Soundwave: needs to know where to  _ find it!” _

Prowl shivered in pleasure, in  _ anticipation. _ “And the sacrifice?”

“Fuel. Repairs.”  _ Touch. _

“Yessssss.”

“Prowl, accepts?” Soundwave held the energon cubes just out of Prowl’s immediate reach, though of course he could just lunge for them and take them… if the exchange wasn’t so important. The psychic countermeasures kept Soundwave from seeing them, but he could almost  _ feel  _ the corrupt code strings dominating Prowl’s processor.

“For the knowledge itself, it’s not enough. But for a reminder of what you already know… “ Prowl’s optics finally flickered on dimly.  _ “More _ than enough.”

“Done then,” Soundwave said, holding the cubes out to Prowl.

“What are you  _ doing?!”  _ he heard Cliffjumper mutter behind him, his blaster still trained on Prowl but not primed to fire. “He’s just going to take those and run.”

Prowl certainly snatched the cubes, subspacing three immediately and skittering away to crouch protectively over the fourth. Flaring his doors wide he glared at the other three (Miko snapped another picture), before darting into the underbrush.

“See?” Cliff’s voice rose to its regular volume. “He’s gone! All that trouble to find him and what do you have to show for it? Nothing.”

“Dude. Chill.” Miko put her hands behind her head and rocked on her heels. “He’ll be back. He’s gotta answer the question!”

Soundwave turned to look at her, surprised. “Yes.” Because she was right. Prowl had accepted the sacrifice, and that meant that the corrupt code that dominated his mind would compel him to return and deliver on his promise. Her thoughts were a swirl of words and pictures, some Soundwave recognized from the human broadcast networks. An undercurrent of that Mad Prophet… trope, he supposed, linked them all together as examples of the concept. Others too,  **Power at a Price** and  **Things Man Was Not Meant to Know** were mixed in, and there were several different kind of mystical bargain tropes, differentiated by the intent of the bargainer, but all tied together by the idea that (if magic was involved) then the terms had to be adhered to. Sometimes that was enforced by terribly nasty consequences for breaking a contract, but sometimes by a creature’s  _ inability _ to break an agreement because of its very nature…  **Magically Binding Contract** … and on and on, more words and images than Soundwave could easily catalogue, examples of hundreds of things, stories and characters, that Prowl reminded her of.

There were so many. Was Prowl’s incomprehensible behavior really so familiar to humans?

And Prowl hadn’t gone far. Telepathic countermeasures generally encrypted a mech’s thoughts; they didn’t disguise or hide them. Soundwave couldn’t translate Prowl’s thoughts, but he could hear them, a constant stream of incomprehensible numbers and letters and glyphs, in the trees just out of sight. He was only taking his time with his fuel.

Soon enough Prowl crept out of the trees again. His optics were off again.

“See?” Miko crowed as Cliffjumper, who grumbled.

He crawled over to Soundwave again and flopped over onto his side, landing on Soundwave’s foot, clearly expecting him to get on with the promised repairs. A different kind of compulsion pressed on him as he opened his toolkit, the same one that had been drawing him to Prowl since he’d first seen him: compassion. Prowl might not care about it beyond how he could twist it to his benefit, but Soundwave still felt it. He still cared about Prowl.

Soundwave meticulously scrutinized and cleaned Prowl’s engine and filters, noting the buildup this time included quite a bit of dust and dirt from driving over desert roads. A few joints even had trailing bits of tumbleweed trapped in them, singed from where the thing had nearly caught fire before being yanked free. Soundwave picked them out, oiling each newly cleaned joint until they all worked smoothly.

He listened as he worked,  _ satisfaction/happiness _ filtering into his field as the sounds Prowl’s systems were making eased and evened out.

“Done,” he said softly when he was finished, still stroking Prowl’s plating after closing the last access panel. Prowl’s engine purred almost inaudibly in pleasure at the touch. It was strange not to hear the pleasure-drunk thoughts properly, but Soundwave was still glad to hear the sounds as evidence that Prowl was enjoying his ministrations. Much like last time, Prowl himself didn’t seem interested in bringing Soundwave’s petting to an end and moving on to the next step of their dance. Soundwave could have comfortably sat for several hours doing just this, but clouds of impatience and boredom were gathering behind him.

Cliffjumper cracked first. “Why hasn’t he answered your question? Isn’t that everything you said you’d give him?”

Prowl’s only answer to Cliffjumper was a dismissive and rude gesture with his doorwing. Miko snickered. “They’re being adorable though!” The girl snapped another picture.

Soundwave didn’t answer Cliffjumper, letting Miko distract him. Fuel and repairs were all he’d  _ said  _ he would give Prowl, but he’d thought one more thing. It wouldn’t surprise him if Prowl somehow knew and was counting  _ touch  _ as one of the things he was owed before giving Soundwave his ‘reminder’.

Touching Prowl wasn’t much of a sacrifice though, other than the time it took. The longer they stayed out here the more annoyed Cliffjumper would be and the more trouble Soundwave would get in when they returned to the  _ Victory,  _ but it was nice to feel Prowl’s engine purring under his hands. Soundwave switched to seeking out the still-bumpy patches on the base metal sections of Prowl’s plating, scritching at the places he knew even without the aid of telepathy were itchy.

The volume of Prowl’s engine-purr increased and his leg thumped rapidly against the ground. He squirmed, moving Soundwave’s fingers over his plating to the itchiest spots, which were also the bumpiest. Soundwave went along with it, letting Prowl show him where he wanted him to scratch.

Eventually even Miko started showing signs of restlessness, however. Soundwave reluctantly withdrew his hands, deciding it was time to stop. Prowl had ceased wiggling and just melted into a puddle of pure bliss curled around Soundwave’s leg. His claws, gently digging into a large gap between armor plates, slowed in their kneading, and the dents and scratches he’d been leaving in Soundwave’s foot only now caught their new owner’s attention. Scrap. Knockout was going to have a  _ fit  _ when he saw those.

“Prowl said Soundwave already knows where to look,” he prompted, wondering where in all the things Prowl had shown him the answer was hiding. “Remind Soundwave.”

“If  _ I _ look in the mirror, what will I see? Even the wisest cannot tell, for the mirror shows many things: things that are, things that were…”

“Oh! I know this one!” Miko jumped, interrupting. “And some things that have not yet come to pass, right?”

Prowl ignored her. “But when  _ you _ looked into  _ your _ mirror, what did  _ you _ see?”

In  _ his  _ mirror… Soundwave shuddered, the memory of the  _ other  _ Soundwave he’d seen the first time he hardlined with Prowl still as disturbing as ever. Looking into that blank mask he had seen things about himself he hadn’t wanted to see (#DisturbingSimilarities), but he’d also seen… 

_ "You have decoded the next set of Iacon coordinates. Excellent work, Soundwave." _

The mirror-Megatron congratulated him for the location displayed on his mask: a location on Earth.

Soundwave let out a soft, startled gasp. He could still see the coordinates perfectly, and while he knew it would be useless to try writing them down for anyone else,  _ he _ could find the place they pointed to. “Soundwave, saw what we need.”

In a movement so quick it was almost violent, Prowl flipped himself over and darted back into the trees. Transaction over.

“That,” Miko said after a moment of silence, “was the  _ coolest _ thing I have  _ ever seen! _ I even have the perfect picture to commemorate it!” She flipped the screen of her device over to show one of the pictures she’d taken of Soundwave just petting Prowl covered in pink, rounded, arrow shapes. “Because that was adorable!” 

“What did you add all the hearts for?” Cliffjumper asked, nowhere near as endeared with the picture as Miko. He thought the ‘hearts’ just made the image more disturbing. 

“Because they are obviously in LOVE!” Miko insisted. “New OTP!”

OTP? Soundwave had to look that one up, and when he found the definition he shook his head. “Not in love,” he said adamantly. He felt concern, compassion, even affection almost akin to what he felt for Laserbeak, but not romantic love. “Soundwave: cares. Not love.”

“How can you care about him after what he did?!” Cliffjumper exploded, thankfully transforming his weapon away before he started waving his arms around. “If I hadn’t been here to see it I never would have imagined you  _ cuddling  _ and  _ petting,”  _ he shuddered, the idea of those words being applied to  _ Soundwave  _ and  _ Prowl  _ (separately, but especially together) supremely unnatural to him, “the mech that tricked you into turning on your own faction!”  _ You’re the most loyal Decepticon there IS!  _ his thoughts continued. “How can you forgive him for using you like that?”

“Woah…” Miko breathed, and Soundwave thought he’d finally see some thought in her head about how dangerous all this potentially was, but no. “That’s seriously messed up. It just means there’s going to be some serious angst before they can get on with the hurt/comfort! Love conquers all!”

“He eats people,” Cliffjumper said flatly. 

_ “Cool!” _

**_“Not_ ** _ cool!” _

“STOP.” Megatron’s voice silenced them both as Soundwave fell back on his soundclips. “Prowl used Soundwave, yes.” He’d used him to get repairs after being Ultra Magnus’ prisoner, then he’d used him to escape being the Decepticons’ prisoner as well. He’d used Soundwave just now too, only there was an upside this time — an upside that made everything, all of it, worth it. “Soundwave, Decepticons: benefits from interactions as well. It’s not his fault.” Knockout’s assertion about a different case, but it applied. Expecting more of Prowl than he was capable of was Soundwave’s fault, not Prowl’s. Placing blame on Prowl or being angry with him was pointless; he couldn’t help what he was.

There was an awkward silence from both of them, Miko because she didn’t really know what Soundwave was talking about; Cliffjumper because he wasn’t willing to argue further with Soundwave. 

Some sort of nocturnal insect made a high pitched chirping sound in Miko’s thoughts and she decided to change the subject. “So when are we going to go find this avatar-making-equation-whatsit you’re looking for?”

Shaking aside his thoughts on how strange it was for  _ Soundwave  _ to be so nice (and deciding not to say anything about his switch back to his ‘normal’ mode of speech), Cliffjumper turned to Miko with a slight frown. “‘We’ aren’t going anywhere but home,” he said. “It’s been almost a whole day, and your parents are going to be looking for you soon.”  _ Like the Cons’re already looking for us. _

“Pfft!” Miko blew off the idea that anyone would be looking for her. “The host parents don’t care where I am.”

“Well I —  _ we  _ — do care,” Cliffjumper countered, glancing at Soundwave for confirmation. Surely if he actually cared about Prowl he would care about making sure the human who had helped them made it back safely?

“Affirmative.” Even at her top speed, which Soundwave knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain for long periods of time, it would be dark by the time Miko made it all the way back to Jasper. A juvenile human alone in the dark in the wilderness was vulnerable to many things, including the feral Praxan who happened to be in the area. “Soundwave, Cliffjumper: will escort you back.”

“No fair!” she insisted, but she climbed into Cliffjumper when he folded down into his alt form and opened his door for her.

They brought her back to where she’d found them, both transforming back to root mood to say goodbye. Soundwave knelt down and extended one long finger to offer a ‘hand’ shake. “Miko: helped Soundwave. Friend.”

“Yeah! Best Robot Friend ever!” Miko bypassed his finger to hug his whole wrist. Soundwave stroked over her hair with his other hand, saddened to see how much she didn’t want them to go in her thoughts.

It would open him up to a potential torrent of messages, but she had understood Prowl better than anyone else within seconds of meeting him… perhaps it would be helpful to be able to consult her in the future. “Trade numbers?” he suggested, displaying a simplified icon of her communications device on his mask.

“You bet’cha!” She held out her — there was the word — phone for Soundwave to type the number into.

The buttons were too small for his fingers, but the smaller tendrils on the end of his data cables would be able to do the job (would be able to connect with it, in fact). He extended one, reaching for the phone so he could leave his frequency with Miko… and copy those pictures.

Miko watched in awe.  _ Those tentacles are so cool! Just like the one that zombie ha—erk! Guess eating people isn’t really cool. But Prowl’s  _ **_still_ ** _ awesome. How often do you see a  _ **_real_ ** _ oracle! Awesome! _ When he was done, Miko scrolled through her contacts and hit  _ call. _ The ringtone he’d assigned to being contacted by this phone (Miko’s voice saying “THAT’S AWESOME!”) went off in his processor and he answered. 

“Just testing, big guy!” Her voice had the odd dual quality of listening to someone both with his audios and over a communications channel.

“Can you hear me now?” he played over the line, familiar with the joke courtesy of one obnoxious purple seeker.

“Loud and clear Sounders!” The dreadful nickname some of the Decepticons had long ago saddled him with didn’t sound so irritating from Miko. Without letting go of Soundwave’s wrist she turned to Cliffjumper. “What about you, Cliffjumper?”

“Love to, but all my long range communications are routed through Soundwave already. Just let him know you want to talk and he’ll patch me through.”  _ He better patch me through…  _

Soundwave nodded, calling Cliffjumper to bring him in on the open call so he would have Miko’s number for future reference. As long as he wasn’t on duty when she called for him, he would definitely connect the call. “No personal calls at work,” he said.

“Whatever.” 

“Yes, sir.”

Ending the call, Soundwave retracted his datacle and gently tapped Miko with his finger. She was still clinging to his wrist. “Time to go.”

_ Don’t want to! _ But Miko hopped off his wrist. She smiled, her eyes a little watery.  _ Not crying. Just stupid allergies…  _ “See you around, big guy.”

“Hey, what about me?” Cliffjumper held out his arms. “Can a mech get a quick hug?”

“Of course!” She ran into his embrace. Being just a  _ little _ closer to her size, she did her best to wrap her arms around his chest. She wasn’t successful, but Cliffjumper used his own embrace to hold her up. 

She didn’t cling to him like she had Soundwave though. A moment later, she was looking at the edge of town, contemplating returning to boring, makes-piano-lessons-look-interesting, Jasper Nevada.

Not looking forward to facing Knockout when they got back to the  _ Victory,  _ Soundwave nonetheless accessed the ship and called up their coordinates to open a groundbridge. Explaining himself to Lord Megatron wasn’t going to be easy either, but it had been the right thing to do. He had something that could help them now, something that would lead them to a way to finally turn the tide in their losing struggle with Ultra Magnus and his empties.

The swirling vortex appeared on command. Soundwave stepped into it, Cliffjumper’s footsteps echoing behind him as they crossed the threshold onto the ship. 

“Home sweet home,” Cliffjumper said, taking in the empty room Soundwave had decided to use as their entry point. Before Soundwave could warn him he hadn’t had a chance to check the hall, he strode over to the door and pulled it open to reveal— “Lord Megatron!”

Soundwave froze.

Before he could regain anything resembling composure, try and explain himself,  _ anything, _ MIKO clambered over his foot. “Wow! You’re really big. And shiny!” She hopped to the ground and looked out into the hall. “Is this a spaceship! That’s SO AWESOME!”

Megatron looked nonplussed by the human suddenly running around his feet. He looked back at Soundwave and raised his optic-ridge. “Soundwave…” he growled, annoyed and relieved. “Want to explain this?”

Soundwave didn’t even know where to begin.

.

.

.

#  Four

.

.

.

“Start with:  _ how did you get these scratches, _ **_Soundwave?”_ ** Knockout demanded. “Because I know what it  _ looks _ like those scratches came from, but you  _ couldn’t be that stupid!” _

Soundwave couldn’t even face the irate medic properly; he hung his head, staring at a point on the floor between Knockout’s feet and Lord Megatron’s. There was no point in lying about it. Knockout recognized Prowl’s handiwork all too well. “Scratches… came from Prowl.”

“Idiot!”

“He’s not!” Miko defended from her place next to Soundwave on the medberth. She’d refused to leave or let herself be shuffled off to Fowler’s care. The government liason was still unaware of the girl’s presence. “Soundwave’s super smart!”

“Except where that vicious  _ lunatic _ is concerned!”

“It’s not like Prowl attacked him! They were cuddling! It was cute! I have pictures!”

“WHAT!”

“Soundwave,” Megatron interrupted the brewing argument with a sharp gesture to halt Knockout’s explosion. “Just tell us what you were doing, seeking out that… psychopath.” Megatron held out his hand, inviting Soundwave to take it, offering comfort. “You could have been hurt.”  _ Again. _

Soundwave took both the offered hand and comfort, though he could tell Megatron was taking comfort from the contact just as much, if not more, than he was. He’d been alarmed when Starscream came to him saying he couldn’t find Soundwave, and when they’d done a headcount and discovered Cliffjumper was missing as well, everyone had begun fearing the worst. Had the Autobots somehow managed to sneak on board and kidnap them? Were they being held prisoner? Tortured? Killed?

Megatron had already had to face the twisted corpse of one comrade in battle; he was sure it would break him to see what had happened to Airachnid happen to Soundwave… 

Laserbeak’s continued peaceful slumber in the medbay could have told them Soundwave, at least, was in no immediate distress, but they hadn’t thought to check. She wasn’t sleeping now, the medbay having gotten far too noisy for anyone to sleep through the racket Knockout and Miko were making, but she was still unperturbed. Soundwave was there, and the tiny creature had bright colors! 

Soundwave was going to have to keep her from swooping at Miko’s hair when his symbiote could fly again if the girl was still around then.

The only one being quiet right now was Cliffjumper, though to Soundwave’s senses even he had plenty to say. He wasn’t going to say anything in defense of what they’d done — it really had been a dangerous, stupid thing to do — but he had no intention of apologizing either. He would own his part in their little escapade and maintain that sometimes dangerous and stupid was necessary.

Right now all that was just in his head, floating on the surface of his thoughts just on the edge of speech where Soundwave couldn’t  _ help  _ hearing them even over Knockout’s verbal (and mental) shouting. The chaotic jumble of voices colliding in his head had him wishing he could block them all out and just deal with what was  _ actually  _ being said, but there was just too much pressing on him. Even pulling in his telepathy as far as he could didn’t help; everyone was just too close.

It didn’t make answering Knockout’s, or Megatron’s, questions any easier.

Knockout and Miko were bickering again as Soundwave struggled to gain enough composure to answer. Megatron frowned at them. Soundwave did fine under pressures like combat, of course, where he mostly didn’t actually need to speak himself, just keep the commlines open through Autobot jamming fields to relay information and orders, but Megatron knew he struggled with his own words on the best of days. Too much noise — volume of both voices and thoughts — never helped.

“Doctor.” Knockout cut himself off mid-word to look at Megatron. “Are any of Soundwave’s injuries immediately threatening?”

Knockout scanned the dents and scratches and the place where Prowl’s claws had slipped through a gap in Soundwave’s armor to put light scoring on the strut beneath and scowled. “Fortunately no,” he drawled.

“Then I suggest you take our new human friend and attend your other patient,” Megatron’s fingers twitched to clearly indicate Cliffjumper, for all that the red scout was not injured.

“NO!” Miko yelled. “I’m not leaving Soundwave with you if he’s going to get in trouble! He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“I wouldn’t call  _ cuddling with the crazy mech _ right either!” Knockout snarled at her.

“But—!”

“Come on, Miko,” Cliffjumper interrupted for the first time. “Right or not, Soundwave disobeyed the rules and now he’s gotta answer for that.”

“But—” Cliffjumper stopped her protest by physically picking her up to follow Knockout to the other side of the medbay, giving Soundwave a bit of space from their yelled thoughts and words. 

“And you?!” Knockout turned on his new victim-er patient, since the mech he wanted to yell at had been taken out of his reach for the moment. “I can’t believe you’d do something this reckless!”

“Really? Last week I jumped off the ship after a terrorcon and  _ this _ is too reckless for you to believe?”

“You did that? Cool!” 

“Aaargh!”

Soundwave could still hear them as they clustered around a berth on the other side of the medbay, but the distance was a relief.

“Well, Soundwave.” There was still Megatron to answer to though. “What were you thinking? Start at the beginning: why did you decide to go after the feral by yourself.”

Cliffjumper had been with him nearly the whole time they were gone, and Miko had been there when they’d finally found him, but Soundwave couldn’t refute that he’d  _ intended _ to go look for Prowl alone.

“Soundwave: needed to ask a question.” Several questions, but that wasn’t relevant to Megatron’s question. “Other Decepticons, shoot first, ask questions never.” Where Prowl was concerned, at least. And that was the plain, honest truth of it: Soundwave had planned to go alone because he hadn’t thought anyone would be willing to help him, or even let him go once they found out his intentions. It was why he hadn’t revealed his quarry to Cliffjumper until  _ after  _ they’d left the  _ Victory,  _ in fact. Soundwave knew how little Cliffjumper enjoyed anything to do with Prowl, and he hadn’t wanted anyone to stop him.

“…Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” 

That about summed it up. 

The disappointment on Megatron’s face was almost harder to bear than anger would have been. “You did not trust me,” he said sadly, evidently of the opinion that if it had meant that much to Soundwave he ought to have been able to argue his case rather than sneaking off.

“Soundwave:  _ knows  _ you,” Soundwave countered. There was nothing he could have said to convince Megatron to let him look for Prowl. Not when he didn’t believe that the feral hadn’t been trying to kill him or Laserbeak.

“That creature is dangerous,” Megatron said urgently. “You,”  _ could have died. _ Megatron shook the thought away. “He’s already hurt you so much, my friend, and I cannot imagine why you would seek him out. He is both malicious and insane; what questions could he answer for you? Why take the risk?”

Soundwave could see in Megatron’s thoughts that he believed it was compassion, the desire to ameliorate the suffering of another which motivated him. A worthy goal in itself, but one he felt was almost wasted on a bitey, feral, selfish wreck like Prowl.

Would he listen this time? “Prowl: did not attack Laserbeak. Not to eat.” It would have been conceivable that he’d stolen her from Ratchet just to eat her, but if that had been the case, she would have been dead before Soundwave reached them. He brought up images of the scene they’d found with the shot up trees, playing a sketchy recreation of Prowl distracting Ratchet, then snatching his symbiote off the rock. “Took. Staged.  _ Waited.”  _ Timestamps of when (he estimated) Prowl had taken Laserbeak (since he did know when Ratchet had left the scene in the  _ Jackhammer _ ) compared to when Soundwave stumbled across Prowl and the very much  _ alive _ Laserbeak in the canyon showed that more than enough time had elapsed for Prowl to drain so small a frame. “Waited for Soundwave.”

Megatron’s first thought was disbelieving. Prowl, the  _ feral, _ could have no use for Laserbeak other than as an easy meal. Then his optics narrowed, remembering the scene when he’d found Soundwave and Laserbeak, with feral crouched over his nearly drained friend,  _ feeding _ on Soundwave’s much larger frame; Prowl had obviously taken the symbiote as a hostage, to get Soundwave to submit as prey. His estimation of Prowl’s intelligence (and how dangerous he was) went up, while his tolerance for his apparent lack of morals went down. Cannibalism, as the last ditch effort of an animal to stay alive was one thing; premeditated and intelligent negotiation to trade one life for another was something else entirely. 

“That doesn’t make him less dangerous,” he said quietly, urgently, as though he wasn’t aware that Soundwave  _ knew that. _

“Doesn’t,” Soundwave agreed, because he  _ did  _ know that! Of course Prowl was dangerous. If he hadn’t been interested in a sacrifice, Soundwave would have been in for a fight against arguably one of the best opponents he’d ever faced — and having fought in the arena, having fought Megatron himself, that was saying something. “Prowl, compelled to answer certain questions. Intention: compel answer. Not get close.”

Even if Miko’s pictures were irrefutable evidence that he  _ had. _

“Which begs the question of what you thought could be gained, my friend.”  _ The feral is utterly insane. _

Soundwave started with the short answer. “Understanding. Of actions, of visions.” Megatron knew about him hardlining with Prowl while he was in their custody, even if Soundwave had never managed to explain what he’d seen. He hadn’t paid attention to the fact that Prowl had shared another in the canyon, too busy being upset over the whole ordeal for it to stand out. But as urgently as he wanted Soundwave to understand the danger Prowl represented, Soundwave wanted him to understand: “Visions —  _ important!” _

Megatron tapped his claws against Soundwave’s medberth. His thoughts rebelled against the idea that superstition was anything to truly believe in. Feeding ghosts was not the same as depending on magic for military matters. 

Part of that, Soundwave knew, since he had been with Megatron so long, was because of the Matrix. He had pursued the Matrix as a symbol of rulership over Cybertron when he still believed changes could be made legally. He had ceded that claim when the Senate had deemed Orion a more worthy holder, only to see his friend, his lover, be  _ changed _ utterly by the artifact and turn on everything they had, together, believed in. Megatron had rejected magic and superstition as being anything but illusion, at best, and completely malevolent at worst. Ultra Magnus’ quest for power through anti-energon and the foul reanimation of corpses was only another example of how magic and the like could only be used for evil.

But Starscream’s superstitions had set him off to find energon in the Rust Sea, where it had been found, and eventually brought them here to Earth. It took effort, but he couldn’t give Soundwave’s experiences less weight. 

That didn’t mean he was instantly believing though. The feral was  _ utterly _ insane. He couldn’t possibly have anything of worth in that twisted processor. “How so?”

“Visions show — something. Something we need.” Soundwave felt frustration creeping into his field and he reigned it back. He couldn’t describe what he’d seen but he needed Megatron to trust him enough to follow him wherever the coordinates led. Finding the location on his own and sneaking off again wasn’t what he wanted. “Lord Megatron, wants Soundwave to make his case. Soundwave: knows where to find —~**…” His sound files corrupted, as he’d known they would, and Soundwave tried again, words emerging softly from his vocalizer rather than his speakers. “The curtain has been drawn back. The mirror showed where the weight to balance the scales rests.” He tightened his hand on his leader’s, pleading with him to trust him. “Soundwave: can’t explain. Only lead, show. Please.”

Megatron’s first thought, hearing Soundwave recite improvised poetry, was to call Knockout to check him. He clenched his fist and fought with that instinct. He  _ trusted _ Soundwave, he really did, but it was much harder to trust Prowl, or this  _ mysticism. _

But…  _ Soundwave. _ Surely it couldn’t hurt their efforts to follow him for a short time.

“Please,” Soundwave repeated. “No need to find him again.” There was no reason Megatron, or any of the Decepticons, should have to deal with Prowl again. In a way Soundwave was going to miss him… assuming he didn’t just  _ turn up _ on his own. Still, he was telling the truth. He didn’t need to go  _ looking  _ for Prowl anymore.

Megatron sighed. “Then we will go to where you lead us, and hope there is something there to find.” He opened his arms, offering an embrace. “This doesn’t get you out of facing Knockout’s wrath, however.”

It would have been too much to hope for that. “Understood,” Soundwave whispered, returning the hug gratefully. “Thank you.”

“And the human?”

“…We’re never going to be rid of you, are we?” The soundclip, an exasperated one of Starscream’s, was the best Soundwave could think of. Nothing about him, Cliffjumper, or even Prowl had unsettled her, and Knockout and Megatron himself hadn’t managed to deter her at all. For better or worse, they weren’t going to be able to just brush her aside.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”


End file.
